GAA must admit: Split Season is not working

For two years now, I have been saying the GAA’s ‘split season’ is an absolute disaster, and to tell the truth, I’ve often felt like I was wasting my time and energy. So I’m glad at least one former inter-county manager has come around to my way of thinking.

Let’s examine the reasons the split season was introduced. Undoubtedly, ordinary GAA club players weren’t getting fair play under the old system where the Inter County Championships ran from May until September.

A club championship game was fixed, then the county team were involved on a draw and replay and the club game went off. This happened repeatedly – first rounds of club championships were often played in May and it could be September before the next game.

Certainly, there was no certainty for the club players who make up around 92% of all hurlers and footballers - they couldn’t plan holidays, weddings, honeymoons or other social occasions. There was a major problem, and as a club officer for decades, I am well aware of what pertained.

The so-called solution - the Utopia, the panacea - the much-lauded split season has solved one problem but caused many others far more serious than the old postponement of fixtures.

Has the GAA ever commissioned a cost-benefit analysis of the split season? I never heard of it anyway. I don’t simply mean cost-benefit in terms of finance, but in terms of developing our games and promotion.

Our promotion in the GAA is woeful. Take the Munster Final next week. After great games in the early round, we now play our top game at 6pm of a Saturday - have we a curtain-raiser? Have we a band? Have we a price hike for tickets?

The club championships in every county are the ‘bread and butter’, the lifeblood of the GAA in every parish. Our inter-county games then should be our shop window, our Champions League, our premiership - something to attract youngsters to Gaelic games and foster a love of our native pastimes.

Here we are at the end of May and over 60% of all our inter-county hurling teams are ‘wrapped up’ for 2025. Promotion - how are ya!

Fair play to one of the Munster rugby bosses who lately commented on the ‘promotional value’ to rugby of big games in Croke park and Páirc Uí Chaoimh. Fair play to the GAA - we truly are sportingly ecumenical, but isn’t it time we saw after our own?

Losing the absolute grasp we had on the minds and heart of the country every September has been an unmitigated disaster.

Is the GAA too proud to admit, ‘We made a mistake’, and admit the same in regards the decoupling of minor and senior inter-county games? Ad nauseam, I have proposed a dual ‘side-by-side’ club and inter-county games programme running from April until September – like the song says. ‘When will they ever learn?’

John Arnold, Bartlemy, Fermoy, Co. Cork